Concentrations tend to be higher in urine because alcohol isn't being broken down as happens in the bloodstream, said Dr. Lindsey Thomas of the Minnesota Regional Medical Examiner's Office in Hastings.

Dr. Lindsey Thomas, a forensic pathologist at the Minnesota Regional Medical Examiner's Office, said all three of the gunshot wounds were through-and-through wounds, one on the left front chest that exited through the left upper back, one in the abdomen that exited through the left hip and one through the upper back that exited through the neck.

Thomas said the cause of death was the chest wound.

She said there was no way to tell in which order the wounds occurred, but said the evidence indicated that the fatal chest wound was the first shot fired.

The Court's opinion, written by Justice Paul Anderson, cited emails sent by Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom to Dakota County Medical Examiner Lindsey Thomas in which Backstrom argued that it would be a conflict of interest for Dakota County medical examiners to work with defense attorneys.

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Thomas, the Dakota County medical examiner, said the Court's ruling will send a clear message to those who might seek to prevent medical examiners from testifying for the defense.She said the opinion went further than she expected in its defense of the independence of medical examiners.

"This is the best possible thing they could have said," Thomas said.

Thomas has been an outspoken critic of the work of Ramsey County Chief Medical Examiner Michael McGee, who testified for the prosecution in the Beecroft case.

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Thomas was one of several medical examiners who successfully challenged McGee's testimony in a separate murder case in Douglas County last year.